Ok Silence, I was quiet this morning at least the best a “baby bull” can be but I guess I did spend a little time on unplugging. I did not open up a piece of technology until scribing time to write this.

Affirmations, I skipped this, I will get it in next time. Ok, I will give a couple; I am so grateful for the opportunity to fulfill a life long passion to be able to sew hope and seeds into others success. I am grateful for a wonderful wife and two loving and health children that God has blessed us with.

Visualization: See affirmations, yep skipped it too. I know how important these two are I am not ignoring them but I just finished the book so give me a break

Exercise: BIG WIN I did 20 minutes of beginners yoga

Reading: Yep I read the last 3 chapters of Miracle Morning and my bible reading for the day as I just started a read through the bible in a year plan.

Scribing, well, your reading it.

I started the new Job as a National Sale Coach for Movement Mortgage on Monday. Shout out to Tim Davis for honoring me with the job and to Rob Durden for taking me onto his team. I can’t tell you guys how much I am looking forward to the next chapter in my life with Movement as a coach.

I’ve been studying the culture and learning about the leadership and I have been really impressed with their vision and their passion. I think this is going to be a great fit.

It’s almost 7, time to go get breakfast ready. I think I will write about the roles we play tomorrow and start mapping out the plan to write my first book. That is what I want to accomplish with my Miracle Morning this year.

Well I’m reading a new book and turning a new page in my career. The book is called Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod. It recommends some things that a lot of great achievers do to separate themselves from the pack. One of the things is getting up at abnormally early hours. I am talking about before 6am. Most of the followers start at 5 and then soon go to 4 or earlier. There are several reasons for that but among them are allowing for personal time to do things like exercise, meditate, hydrate and plan your day and as you are reading now, journaling. Now as a relatively new father of 2 under 5 year old children, this makes a lot of sense to me. You tend to lose a lot of your “me” time once kids come along.

As work from home father, that can mean that your business can suffer because some of my “me” time was spent on recovery time that made me more productive when I was working by giving me time to do things that I enjoy that help recharge the batteries like golf or fly fishing and some was spent on business and day planning. I think one of the most missed parts of business productivity is time blocking and being intentional in your daily activities instead of being reactionary.

Today I want to focus today on the journaling part. Why would I want to journal? Well as a late in life ADD diagnosed person, it can help to clear the mind from all of that pent up mental energy that often feels like a ping pong ball bouncing around in my head randomly changing my thoughts to whatever synapse or brain tissue it excites next. It is a creative outlet that serves the same purpose as list making, and carrying around a small notebook or using Keep or Evernote to write down those little things that jump in your mind while you are going about your daily routine. Those things can be great ideas you have or just a reminder to go get milk before you go home. Most importantly though, this allows you to keep the RAM in your brain clear to run the operating system more efficiently much like an transferring your OS in your computer to and SSD and leaving a nice fat hard drive for all of the junk you need to store.

I came across some writings of a well respected author in the golf space who unfortunately passed a few years ago in 2013. His name is Carey Mumford. He was a Wake Forest and Colgate School of Divinty graduate, a chaplain and a golf consultant to top level players and teachers. He wrote an article that caught my attention a few years ago that has just come back up called “How Learning Happens”

In it he describes the progress toward the ideal execution of a motor skill that he calls subconscious competence. That is the state in which we can perform an activity with ease and precisely without thinking about it like driving a car or riding a bicycle. I have spent some time studying this myself as I was a golf instructor as a profession in the past and I still work a little with some of my past students on their golf game. I have heard countless times when a great shot was pulled off by one of the masters of the game under unbelievable pressure when asked what they were thinking about and the typical answer was either “nothing” or “I can’t remember.” I don’t think that is a coincidence either. In today’s highly competitive golf world, things like this are not left to chance among the golfing elite on the PGA tour and they employ sports psychologists to help them reach this stage of subconscious competence often referred to of being in “the zone”.

More to come on this later, I’ve been up since 4:30 and it is 6:30 and I hear the kids on the baby monitor starting to wake up. Time to go play my favorite role of Daddy.

Who would not give up, even though they were not planted in fertile ground.

They were struggling to survive wondering where they belonged and needing something to live for. God told them they were to bloom where they were planted and trust in Him that He would provide.

And so He did and he gave them a little tree to love, also born out of difficult circumstances but now thriving in the new soil where it was planted.

In the meantime there was a fourth tree. Though it had been cut back several times and shrouded by the garden around it, it still emerged over the under growth, too innocent to know that is should not be thriving in such an odd place.

So the four trees came together to form a family, their bonds formed not from blood but by love and they were strengthened by their shared circumstances and trust in the Lord.

These trees started emerging from the edge of our flower garden where we cleaned out and put new landscaping fabric over all but the existing flowers a few years ago so as not to have any “volunteer” weeds or other unwanted growth forming. Steph called them “weeds”as they were still pretty small and she usually pulls the weeds out but these were no normal little “weeds”.

When I went to investigate I discovered that they were in fact, little trees. After they started to grow a little and she asked me about pulling them, I was thinking about George Strait’s little flower growing up in the middle of the sidewalk in the song “I saw God today”. The challenge that these trees have gone through just to survive where they are is incredible. We don’t take great care of the garden and have even been successful in even killing a cactus! We don’t have a green thumb between us.

With that thought in mind, I thought, you know what, those two trees were not just trees, they were me and Stephanie. We might have not have come together under the best of circumstances and the Lord knows the struggle that what we have been through would have toppled many, but we have survived and the struggle has made us a stronger couple.

Oddly enough, another new and even smaller one has bursted from underneath that same landscaping fabric on the other side of the house.

The forth and final one has fought it’s way right through the hasta at the end of the garden where the drive angles out and everyone accidentally runs over it when leaving our house. It’s been run over by cars over and over against and I’ve tried cutting it back several times now as it is right in the middle of the other plant but it just keeps on coming back.

I guess we’ll all just keep thriving where the good Lord put us and quit questioning it.

]]>http://wadeconway.com/2014/10/02/conway-adoption-fundraiser-bbq/feed/0Wilson County is the Fastest growing County in TN according to latest Censushttp://wadeconway.com/2013/09/20/wilson-county-is-the-fastest-growing-county-in-tn-according-to-latest-census/
http://wadeconway.com/2013/09/20/wilson-county-is-the-fastest-growing-county-in-tn-according-to-latest-census/#respondFri, 20 Sep 2013 20:28:12 +0000http://wadeconway.com/?p=243Continue reading →]]>

Is 40 the new 20? If so, it sure doesn’t feel like it. I really never liked anything that was “the new” anything else.

So, what does it mean to be 40? According to statistics, the average life expectancy in the US is 76 and growing a few months every year so I am half way through. You want to look back and see what you have accomplished in half of your life. I think most are tempted to see how they are doing financially, what their title is, what status they have achieved. I have never put a lot of stock in those things, however, I do want people to think well of me and I do want to leave a legacy. The question is, what it the legacy that you are leaving? If you were to leave today, what would people say about you? I have not made any major contributions to society where my name will be spoken of for years like Franklin or Edison. I have not built an empire around myself and used my fortune to make my name know in every household like Trump. I think of the Montgomery Gentry song “That’s something to be proud of.” That generation of folks that fought in WWII seem to be a different breed. I don’t think I or many of my peers fare well in comparison.

What legacy does a common man leave? What is a noble profession? What does today’s man do to give something back? It seems like all of the teachings today are about ‘getting yours”, making big money and climbing the social and economic ladder, but when a man turns 80 and has made a fortune, does he really feel like he gave something back?

While doing research on this post I ran across the link of the Carnegie Mellon prof that died a few years ago that gave his going away speech.